FALL RIVER — Bishop George Coleman, the head of the Diocese of Fall River, turns 75 on Saturday, which requires him under the Catholic Church’s code of canon law to submit his letter of resignation.

Under the normal process for bishops who reach the mandatory retirement age, Pope Francis will not ask Coleman to immediately step down. Instead, Coleman will continue to serve as bishop while the process begins to select his successor, who will be the eighth bishop of Fall River.

“It’s a process that usually takes eight months to a year. We don’t know how soon anything would be acted on,” said John Kearns, communications director for the Diocese of Fall River.

Speculation has been building for months among some observers in the local Catholic community as to who Pope Francis will appoint to succeed Coleman, a Fall River native who was appointed bishop on April 30, 2003, by Pope John Paul II. Coleman was the second “native son” of the diocese chosen to serve as its leader since its establishment in 1904.

The apostolic nuncio — the pope’s ambassador to the United States — will interview local priests, members of religious orders and lay Catholics to build a profile of the Fall River diocese’s needs and to determine what skills and qualifications the next bishop should have. The nuncio will forward the names of three candidates to the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, which will then screen and rank the candidates for Pope Francis, who will make the final choice.

Kearns said Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the apostolic nuncio to the United States, will also consult with Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the current archbishop of Boston, and other bishops, including the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The pope has said he wants bishops who are pastors, not career-climbing prelates. He has said he wants candidates who are “close to the people, fathers and brothers” and who do not have the “psychology of princes.” The pope has also shaken up the Vatican bureaucracy by changing personnel in the office responsible for screening potential bishops.

The Rev. Roger Landry, pastor of St. Bernadette Church in Fall River, said he expects the next bishop will follow Francis’ style of connecting with people on a personal level, or what the pope has described as a “pastor smelling like his sheep.”

“In my opinion, because of the aggressive secularism in Massachusetts, we’re going to need a man who’s going to be able to articulate, clearly, compellingly and with hope, the proposal the church has in the joy of living according to the gospel,” said Landry, who added that the next bishop will probably be a “polyglot” who speaks multiple languages and can relate to a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual diocese.

Page 2 of 2 - “We’re going to see a bishop who is very much someone who interacts with people in the way we’re seeing Pope Francis at his own level interacting with people who come to the Vatican,” Landry said.

Coleman, who was born in Fall River and raised in Somerset, has been a low-key bishop who rarely makes headlines like some of his more outgoing and politically-minded fellow bishops. However, Landry credited Coleman with leading the diocese through a tough time of transition in which several parishes were merged and Catholics schools closed because of the demographic shift away from cities and declining Mass attendance.

“He has led us patiently through an age of pastoral planning and reorganization of the diocese’s resources to meet changing needs, pretty much without rancor, which is a great tribute to the way he has patiently worked through that, which is a challenge for any bishop,” said Landry, who also praised Coleman for being willing to send young men studying for the priesthood to top-flight seminaries across the country and in Rome.

“He has been very steady in his leadership style so that everyone in the diocese had very clear expectation as to what he was expecting of them,” Landry said.

In the meantime, Coleman will be carrying out all his responsibilities as bishop and maintaining a full calendar, said Kearns, who noted that Bishop Timothy Anthony McDonnell, the head of the diocese in Springfield, is 76 years old.

“Bishop Coleman’s ministry is far from over,” Kearns said. “He could continue on a year. It certainly is business as usual for Bishop Coleman.”